


Peanut butter, sensory memories and you

by mostlikelydefinentlymad



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Bucky Barnes Returns, First Kiss, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Steve Rogers Feels, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Stucky - Freeform, Tony Stark Feels, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony is a good friend, post winter soldier, prewar flashbacks to 1940s brooklyn, stand alone fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-19
Updated: 2015-08-19
Packaged: 2018-04-15 13:17:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4608195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mostlikelydefinentlymad/pseuds/mostlikelydefinentlymad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve prides himself on keeping his issues under wrap and it's all good and well until Bucky sweeps into his life and he has to face the music. For years he'd avoided certain scents and foods as they'd send him into a tailspin and drag him kicking and screaming back to the past and despite them linking to happy memories - they were still painful. </p><p> </p><p>***warning for food sensory issues - not with eating but with smell***</p>
            </blockquote>





	Peanut butter, sensory memories and you

The English dictionary defines sensory memory as  "the _shortest-term_ element of memory. It is the ability to retain impressions of sensory information after the original stimuli have ended."  Steve disagrees - certain smells and sights take him back to Brooklyn - a home with Bucky that no longer exists and the weight of it on his chest makes it hard to breathe. He keeps those memories under lock and key and hides them behind a snarky attitude and dazzling smile. It works - until it doesn't.

 

"I don't get it. What did I do wrong? It's a jar of peanut butter," Tony screws the lid back on the peanut butter and places it back on the counter. He'd offered Steve a peanut butter sandwich and he'd whirled away from it like it might as well be a live grenade- granted it wasn't gourmet but Steve had never struck him as the type to dine on lobster and steak. 

"It's nothing - just...don't worry about it." And with that Steve stalks out of the room leaving Tony blindsided. He greatly wanted to follow him and demand an answer but he held back and ate the sandwich - no need in wasting good food.

 

Steve retreats to his floor of the tower (temporary lodging until he could find an apartment - his last one hadn't worked out so well) and locks the door behind him before he slides down it and curls his arms around his knees. Tony must think that he's losing his marbles and maybe he is.

 _"We're almost out of peanut butter but I scraped enough up to make a sandwich - you take half and I'll take the other okay?"  Bucky nudges a plate toward Steve and they're both sick to death of eating the same thing nearly every night but it's cheap and they can easily share it.  Steve nods and slowly eats his half - relishing every crumb as his stomach continues to rumble.  "When I get a better job we're gonna eat like kings - might even add some jam like your ma used to make," Bucky gives him a half hearted smile and he very nearly melts._ He'd been drafted shortly after  & they'd never had the chance.

He can't help the sob that catches in his throat - if he could go back...if he could just walk away from everything he would. Until then he'll run far away from the smell of peanut butter, of hair pomade, of Old Spice and popcorn.

 

He scrubs his face with a warm cloth and makes his way back to the common room where Tony is making a pot of coffee and talking to Jarvis out loud - mumbling something about decaf and being awake all night.

"I'm sorry about earlier," Steve stares at the wall behind Tony and hopes that he doesn't push for an explanation.

Tony waves it off and catches him off guard - "After New York I couldn't handle the smell of exhaust and ice in the Winter."  He knows exactly what Steve is going through.

Steve sighs and his shoulders sag - he's exhausted from carrying the weight of the world and suitcases filled to the brim with guilt.

"We lived on peanut butter for years."  It's a simple enough answer without going into detail about how Bucky would sometimes slather more peanut butter on Steve's half of the sandwich than his own or saving up pennies to buy another jar. 

Tony pulls out a chair and rubs his eyes. All this time he'd thought that America's golden boy had survived war and the great depression without a scrape. Apparently he was skilled at hiding it and he could relate - he only allowed himself to fall apart when Pepper was there to hold him and listen just in case he ever wanted to talk about it. He hadn't until now. 

"I'll be sure to get Nutella next time - have you saw the price of that stuff? It was created around the 1940s but I don't think you could've afforded it then," he does his best to dodge the heavy talk - he's no good at comforting others - and go for light teasing instead. 

Steve nods and gives him a polite smile - "I'm going to head to bed. Its been a long day."  Tony watches him leave the room and checks the time - 8:30pm. Much too early to settle in for the night - perhaps Steve had more than one demon he was battling. 

They don't speak of it and from that point on the peanut butter is replaced with multiple jars of Nutella. Steve couldn't be more grateful.

 

Two years, two weeks from that day he's standing in the same room with the one person he thought he'd never see again. Bucky's hair is longer and darker than it used to be and his eyes no longer sparkle like they once did but he's alive and he remembers Steve.

"Where's the peanut butter?," he pushes aside jars and cans in search of it. Tony scoffs - after eating as much of it as Steve had implied he would've thought he'd be sick of it. Perhaps it's familiar and comforting, he thinks.

Steve stiffens in his chair and takes a deep breath in through his nose and out with a large puff of air.

"Pepper has a vendetta against it. She said that if I buy another jar she'll kick me out of bed," Tony smirks and prides himself on being such a good liar. He's had years of practice.

"What's this brown stuff?," Bucky holds up a half empty jar of Nutella and stares at it as if it might sprout wings. He doesn't trust it.

"Hazelnuts and cocoa powder," Steve answers from across the room. He's attempting to read a newspaper at the small table & failing.

"You tried this?"  Bucky asks curiously.

"Yeah I have - it's good. Try it. Much better than living on peanut butter that's for sure," the words tumble off of his lips before he can call them back. Wonderful.

"You used to love it," Bucky tentatively sinks a spoon into the jar and scrapes - it sticks to his fingers and the top of the spoon. Deciding it was now or never he shoves the spoon into his mouth and pulls a face - it's sweet enough to make his teeth hurt.

"I used to love a lot of things," Steve says with a sigh. Bucky's face drops as he puts the container and spoon back onto the counter. _No no no...not that._

"I meant food wise - used to eat a lot of beans remember?"  Tony's eyes dart from Steve to Bucky and back again - these two have a lot to work through still - it's obvious. He wouldn't spill Steve's secret or how he avoided certain foods and scents to this day.

Bucky's jaw tenses and suddenly he's not feeling hungry anymore. Sure - Steve _must_ love him to have trailed him for two years and all but begged him to stay but Bucky remembered loving him more than life itself - more than anything. He'd always assumed it was one sided - why would that change just because they'd lost decades with one another?

"We can...we can get some peanut butter. I mean...if it's important to you," Steve stumbles over his words and hopes like hell that he says no. Bucky has enough of his own issues without piling on his.

"Crunchy. Spent half our lives eating creamy," Bucky says quietly.

Steve clenches his hands around the newspaper and it makes a loud crinkling sound. Bucky looks at him with concern but doesn't speak. He knows there's something wrong but he can't put his finger on it.

"If you two gals are done dishing about nut butter spreads then I'm going to head up to the lab," Tony interjects as he gives Steve's shoulder a quick pat on the way out.

Bucky makes an excuse and leaves Steve alone with his thoughts. He slumps into the chair and wonders exactly when he fell apart - simple. 1944 on a snowy mountaintop along a speeding train with an outstretched hand that never reached its other half. God he was a mess.

 

Bucky looked completely out of place in the crowded grocery store - black and silver amongst a sea of colors. Still he stalked down aisles like he had a mission - and he did. He'd dragged a protesting Steve along with him and he'd been silent the entire trip.

"I don't get it - fifteen aisles for food? What happened to five aisles and one check out lane?" Bucky sounds every bit like the older version of himself and Steve can't help but laugh.

"Things change, Buck," he replies with a much more serious tone. He isn't only talking about food. Bucky was the only thing in his life that reminded him (for better or worse) of an era that had passed them by while Steve had been sleeping and Bucky...well he didn't like to think about that.

Bucky says nothing as he finally locates the aisle with peanut butter, Nutella, jam and was that chocolate syrup? They'd never been able to splurge on such luxuries. He resisted the urge to scoop up five bottles and mix them into anything and everything.

"Honey roasted peanut butter, soy nut butter, chocolate peanut butter, crunchy, smooth, Reese peanut butter - not even sure what that one means," He plucks various jars off of the shelf and tosses them into the cart he'd just nabbed from an empty aisle.

"Hey Steve - you remember...-," he breaks off as he meets Steve's eyes. They're wide and frantic - like a caged animal.

"We can buy Nutella, I don't mind. I'll put these away we'll grab a jar and go," he begins to remove them from the cart but a strong hand grabs his wrist and stops him.

"I'm fine - get...get the peanut butter," he curses the stammer in his voice - a crack in the mask he'd perfected since unthawing from a freezing grave.

"We're gonna check out and when we get back you're gonna tell me whats eatin' you," Bucky gives him a stern look that says 'You're not weaseling your way out of this one.'

 

Steve follows Bucky onto the floor that they now share - separate bedrooms because that line hadn't been crossed yet or anything near it for that matter. 

Bucky unpacks no less than six jars of multiple brands and flavors and puts them in the cabinet next to a jar of Nutella because dammit he finds the sticky hazelnut spread addicting despite the sweetness.  He watches as Steve slumps onto the couch and seems to deflate.

"This is the part where you tell me whats wrong," he says as he scoots Steve aside and sits down next to him.

"I told you I'm fine," Steve pastes on a smile and promptly forgets that this is Bucky he's trying to fool. Had it been anyone else they would've bought it.

"We can do this the hard way and I can bring Tony in or you can spill the beans."  He's not positive but it seems like Steve trusts Tony and if he can't trust him than at least he'd confide in Tony. The very thought of it makes him physically ache. For the longest time - more than half of their lives they'd only had one another and now? Now Steve had an entire fleet of friends and he'd be lying if he said it didn't keep him awake at night wondering what the hell he's even doing here.

"You wouldn't understand."

"Try me."

Steve hesitates for a moment - draws in a deep breath and closes his eyes, opens slowly before speaking.

"Certain smells and foods....I can't handle them is all," he replies and leaves the answer purposely vague.

Bucky laughs and shakes his head. Steve wasn't the only one with those issues.

"Doesn't mean you can laugh at me," Steve frowns and folds his arms against his chest defensively.

"I'm not laughing at you, promise. It's just...we're two old guys from a time where crackers and peanut butter were cheaper than a gallon of milk and yet here we are sitting on a sofa in the 21st century still bickering about it. But that's not what I wanted to say okay? Let me get it out before you get all huffy."

 

Steve is near impossible to read but the bouncing of his right leg gives him away - a nervous habit that hadn't gone away with time. Once he'd tried to fib his way out of telling Bucky about who had really started the fist fight in the alley way one rainy afternoon. It hadn't worked.

Bucky eyes the offending leg and continues.

"I know what you're goin' through. I can't...I can't use the freezer or even go near it. Don't know if you've noticed but I skipped that section at the store."  Ice, snow, cold metal bands wrapped around each arm with no hope of escape - the same images that haunted him nearly every night. Apparently they both had their problems.

Bright blue eyes shoot up to meet his own in the same way Steve had looked after a fight - broken down but resilient. 

"Now that I've done went and bared my soul can you make me feel better by telling me what's wrong?,"  he reaches over and takes Steve's hand in his own and it's more touching than he's used to (he's working on that - years of sinister men's hands on his body is enough to make him cringe with someone so much as pecks him on the shoulder lightly).

Steve flips his hand over and intertwines his fingers with Bucky's. The last time they'd held hands was in the early '40s when Bucky had talked him into riding The Cyclone at Coney Island. He misses it something awful.

Bucky goes one step further and brings Steve's hand to his lips and presses a kiss - petal soft and gentle to the back of it. Steve's stomach fills with butterflies and already he's feeling lighter.

"When you were...um...when you fell...," he falters and Bucky gives his hand a squeeze. It helps.

"I couldn't stand certain smells and it's not...it's not only peanut butter. It's hair pomade and oranges and...and Old Spice." He keeps his eyes locked on their hands as he speaks - he feels like a live wire exposed for the world to see but this is not the world, he reminds himself, this is Bucky. He doesn't have to throw up walls and a smile that he says he's not breaking apart on the inside.

"Old Spice? Isn't that what I used to wear?" Bucky recalls a fuzzy memory -

_taking the palms of his hands and wiping the cologne on Steve's slender neck - tracing a pulsing vein with his fingertip as Steve's eyes slid closed and he titled his head back. Bucky had jumped at the opportunity despite his common sense telling him he was toeing a very dangerous line. He'd stepped forward and breathed hot air on the place where his palms had been and told himself and Steve that he was only doing this so the cologne would dry faster. Steve's lips had parted and oh he was beautiful standing there all sex and innocence at the same time. Bucky had promptly pulled back when he realized what he was doing and Steve had snapped to attention and stumbled over his words as he mumbled a thanks._

"It was, yeah," Steve picks at Bucky's finger with his other hand and keeps his eyes averted. He'd buried that memory along with the feel of Bucky so close that their chests were brushing long ago. Those were days they could never go back to. 

Bucky's voice is husky as he says, barely above a whisper, "Whatever this is we can work through it together and I'll eat in the other room and brush my teeth after."

Steve nods absently and he might as well be a sickly 90lb lightweight with knobby knees and pointy shoulders - his insides certainly don't match his outsides that's for sure.

Oranges...Steve had mentioned them as well. Bucky drifts away once more - 

_Christmas Eve 1939 - the taste of citrus on his lips as his eye follows a trail of juice on Steve's lip. They'd been a gift from their next door neighbor - three bruised up oranges but to them they were heavenly. He'd leaned in close and brushed the sticky juice off of Steve's bottom lip with his thumb and his heart had pounded loud enough in his chest that he was sure Steve could hear it. Steve's tongue had moved to lick his lips instinctively only to reach Bucky's finger instead. They'd both gone still and Bucky had replaced his finger with his mouth - Steve had kissed him back - softly and Bucky felt like a top spinning out of control. His mind had eventually caught up and he drawn back and retreated to the kitchen with the rest of the oranges. It hadn't been his first or last kiss but it had certainly been the most memorable._

He couldn't help but wonder if all of Steve's food aversions were tied to memories of the two of them and though it made no sense at all he blamed himself. If he had of held onto the railing tighter - if he hadn't been such a damn weakling and had fought them harder as they taunted him about Steve and how he'd be better off without James Barnes in his life. He'd struggled with those demons ever since. They would make room for happier memories - would frame them like snapshots in his mind - starting now.

Wordlessly he lifted Steve's chin and as gently as he had then he covered Steve's mouth with his own. Every part of him came alive all at once - electricity running through his veins in the best of ways.

Steve's eyes fluttered closed as he wrapped both hands around Bucky's neck and into his hair - he wanted to drink him in. He broke apart and licked a path across Bucky's collarbone - Bucky moaned and clamped strong hands on Steve's hipbones. This touching - he could get used to this. 

Decades of pent up desire and love blended seamlessly into heated kisses and the tightest of embraces in between. Bucky decided that this was worlds better than that Christmas. 

They spent the night tangled up in one another on the sofa and fell asleep somewhere around two a.m. with arms and legs splayed over one another.

 

Three weeks later Tony opened the common room's cabinet to find two jars of peanut butter - one crunchy for Bucky and one smooth for Steve. They'd even gone so far as to write their names on them. Could they possibly get more mushy? They could take down anyone in their path without so much as a flinch and yet around one another they were all smiles and had even taken to pecking one another on the lips in front of everyone - they hadn't explained and no one had asked. Steve was _happy_ and that was what mattered. 

He pulled a Sharpie out of a container of pencils, pens and markers and crossed out Bucky's name - replaced it with _Cap's Bucky_. He was feeling clever as he put the containr back where it had been just as the two of them strolled into the room looking like the sun rose and set on one another.

As for his own issues - Steve had inspired him to take them on one step at a time with Peppers help. He was grateful.

He gave them a quick grin as he speed walked from the room to catch up with Bruce.

Bucky picked up the jar of peanut butter and shook his head. "Stark," he groaned.

"What did he do?" Steve came up behind him and encircled his waist and dropped a kiss on the side of his neck. He leaned back against him and momentarily forgot what he was scowling over. 

He held up the jar for Steve to see and they both laughed. Honestly Bucky didn't mind despite the sheer cheesiness of it - he had always been Steve's.

"You're mine huh?," Steve turned him around in his arms until they were face to face.

"Guess so - you're stuck with me," Bucky grinned and gently nipped Steve's lip.

"Nah I don't believe you - maybe you could show me," Steve smirked and the mischievous glint from their younger days was back in his eye. He felt so alive. 

"If you insist," Bucky took Steve's hand and followed him to their floor and then to the bed that they now shared.

They would make new sensory memories and repeat as often as needed.

**Author's Note:**

> fun fact: Nutella actually did come about in the 1940s. hazelnuts were used in place of chocolate because it was scarce due to the war. and Hershey's chocolate syrup existed as far back as 1926.
> 
> also I couldn't NOT include something along the lines of Bucky being Steve's and vice versa. blame Marvel and their not so subtle shipping.


End file.
